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Provan House
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In many ways the most difficult commission for any designer is his or her own house. The desire to experiment, to stake out an architectural position is tempered by the awareness that the building inevitably will become to peers and potential clients a benchmark of the designer's creativity and professional capacity in ways that other commissions will not. Jeffrey Provan, a principal in the successful and growing architectural practice Neometro, has recently designed a house for himself and his family.
Provan collaborates closely with his fellow directors in the initial stages of all jobs that pass through the practice. He regards his own house as typical of the recent work of the practice.
The house stands on a rectangular block facing east-west. It is a large house, about 260 square metres arrayed over three levels. The basic internal organisation of the house is straightforward. Ground floor living spaces are organised around a centrally placed stairwell, visually as well as functionally, connecting living areas with sleeping spaces and the study upstairs. The rectilinear organisation of the building is aligned with the orthogonal local street pattern, but the internal spaces of the house are enlivened by an overlaid diagonal axis aligned with the grid of the central city which is clearly visible from the upper-level decks and windows. The diagonal axis is used to create a number of variations to the basic orthogonality of the plan. Services are placed to the south and major living spaces given a northerly aspect.
The house is edged towards the southern boundary maximising the availability of light and sun for the north facing windows into the living spaces. These spaces are visually ordered by the placement of six grey cement rendered piers at three metre spacing along the northern elevation. The palette of colours and finishes is muted, tones of grey and brown. The restrained colours utilised in the interior of the ground floor living spaces generate a calm, contemplative atmosphere in keeping with the strong Japanese influence which is everywhere evident, from the elaborately organised entry sequence to the internal furnishings.
The smallish rear courtyard at ground-level is complemented by generous upperlevel decks opening off the upstairs sleeping spaces. Provan envisages that as the internal dynamics of his growing family change, and as the nature and scale of the buildings surrounding his house change, the use patterns of internal spaces and external decks will adapt to new circumstances.
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